Saturday, June 15, 2013

20m from the car....and snagged nothing!


My portable mobile by the river.
It was another great day  here and I wanted to get all the house chores done and get on to some radio stuff! I wanted to get out and about with my KX3 so today I decided to operate from the car with my 20m whip antenna. Not sure how charged up the KX3 battery was I took along with me my new external battery just in case a low battery issue came about. The All Asia contest is on so the bands could be busy with DX and I wanted to be there to make some contacts. I found a nice place in town along the river were I was able to stay in the car as the bugs are very bad at this time of year. The bands were alive with DX, the first station that was booming in was JH4UYB from Japan then came RN3F from Russia, OH2BV from Finland, LY6A from Lithuania and finally UP2L who was 17 years old by the way from Kazakhstan. All GREAT DX but none of which could hear my 5 watts from the portable setup. I then moved on to just
A view down the river
calling CQ at the 20m watering hole. I did get a response from W5ESE from Texas but conditions changed very fast and he was still trying to pull out my call form the mud. The 2 hours went by very fast without really one confirmed contact! It was now time to pack up and head for home and try to make some contacts on the Elecraft K3  this evening.
On a side note.......last night I did make contact with a new DXCC 7Z1HL from Saudi Arabia! 

2 comments:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Mike, all very well known stations in contests you heard. Must be depressing you couldn't make a QSO. Another antenna may be a solution? If signals are over S9 you should have a possebility to make it even if they are S7 or so. Well, hope you're going to try again,next time better luck. 73, Bas

VE9KK said...

Good evening Bas, The signals on the KX3 were barely moving the needle. (LED in the KX3's case) but the receiver on the rig is fantastic as well the noise level was very low...around S1-2 which made them boom in. I have had great results with the mobile whips in the past and I am putting it down to conditions on the other side of the pond. I will say that any time on the radio is never a depressing time even if I don't make a contact.
Mike
Have a good week Bas